Riddling Wine Rack Door - If you can dream it up, we will make it for you

Over the years, we have had a lot of unusual requests from our customers, but the Riddling wine rack door has to be my favorite.

Riddling is a bygone process of removing sediment from Champagne and other wines.  The sediment was yeast left behind in the second fermenting process. In the early 19th century,
there were several ways of avoiding the unappealing cloudiness that appeared in bottles of Champagne.  Often a new glass would be used for each serving.  Other times, the Champagne would be poured into a decanter before serving, but this method caused an unfavorable decrease in the "bubbliness" of the Champagne.

Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin was the first to discover "Riddling".  She noticed that the sediment would loosen if she shook the bottle.  She cut holes in her kitchen table so she could store the bottles upside-down and the sediment would go to the neck instead of the bottom.  Once all of the sediment was in the neck, it was frozen and easily removed in one piece.

Although this process has been replaced with modern technology, the charm of the riddling racks remains.  Many people use the racks simply to display their wine, but our customer, Shane R., thought it would be cool to have sliding doors made out of riddling racks.

He was right!  We created the doors from a mixture of antique oaks, using biscuit joinery.  We gave the doors a light sanding and hand rubbed finish and finished it by wrapping the edges in steel.  These unique doors hang on a double rail system and serve as a custom pantry entrance in our customer's home in Georgia.